Dumb**s alert: am I the first to drain it??

[DarkStar]

I'm very curious if you charge to 80% or 100%... If you only do 80%, maybe the lack of top-end balancing is contributing to the issue (as strange as that would be)...

 

[wsbca]

26 "miles" on the range estimation. ...13 actual miles driven, it went dead.

The roadside assistance failure is bad, and if you have the inclination you should escalate that as much as possible within Nissan - if you like, PM me and I'll give you the contact info for the North American VP of parts & service who interviewed me about our car.

As to the range issues - like a few other respondents, I'm curious to know more when it comes to figuring out whether you experienced a truly unique failure or the car behaved relatively normally aside from the (well acknowledged, I think) lack of accuracy of the range estimate. Specifically, how many bars did you have when it said 26 miles? And, exactly what sort of driving had you been doing in the period shortly before that? Lengthy low speed period, lots of downhill, etc. that might have teased the car into thinking the upcoming miles would be just as easy? Presumably before you left for the 15 mile outbound trip to the airport you had a range figure...was it 41 (26+15) or considerably higher than that? I don't think I'd leave for a 30 mile round trip with just 41 showing unless I had other indications that the 41 was a low (or at least not a high) estimate.

mwalsh is keeping pretty close track and getting just over 6 miles per bar if I recall. We're getting about 6 miles per bar on a 24 mile round trip commute which has some freeway and some climbing. That would match up pretty well to the EPA estimate of 72. And that's in somewhat warmer weather. If you had 6+ bars when you left home, that's one thing, but if you had 5 or fewer, or maybe more to the point, fewer than 4 when you left the airport, then I'm less surprised that you ran out. Put another way, what were your total miles since the previous charge, and what level was that charge?

 

[klapauzius]

I did charge the car a couple of times to 100%, not on this day though.
I also had it close to zero 2 times, without experiencing any trouble.

I took a closer look at the distances involved:
If you take Hwy 99 from the airport the distance is ~17 miles. I took the I5 though, so the previously posted
numbers are a bit off....in reality it looks a little bit like my fault and not the batteries. The reason why I believed it was ~16 miles initially is that the Leafs GPS wanted me to take Hwy 99 and was showing this distance when I started at the airport.

Still, my wife started the day 80% charged, did drive a little bit around the city, went at
an estimated range of 60 miles to the airport (according to google maps its 19.8 miles from the airport to our house) to pick me up. She did drive on the freeway (I5) to get there. According to this estimate there should have been a 20 mile buffer for the round trip, so it was not an outrageous thing to try.

Temperature was pretty much the same as on the way back (~32F). She waited a bit on the cell-phone lot, no heater or accessories on, then picked me up at the curb. At this point the car was showing 26 miles left, SOC was 3 bars.
Shortly after downtown Seattle, 7 miles out from home, the estimated range had dropped to something around 11 miles and then I got the --- range and on the bridge the car went into turtle mode. I was coasting off the freeway and then it would not move a bit. Turning it on and off would not do anything at all.

I have the car since 1/20/2011 and it has now 470 miles on it. The car itself reports 3.4 Miles/kWh on the trip computer, while carwings says its 4.7 kWh (which is a blatant error, curious when they fix this). Anyway, assuming that 3 bars SOC mean 25% charge left = 6 kWH that should have gotten me 6 x 3.4 Miles or 20.4 miles, which would have been enough.

I hope that the cold weather explains this and not a bad battery... I just don't get it that the temperature apparently does not go into the range estimate at all.

The car started out at 80% charge in the garage, which is about 45-48 F at this time of the year, maybe a bit lower on cold days like this one. I wonder if at this temperature the capacity of the car is actually less than 24 kWh? If the bars just show relative charge level and all range calculations are based on 24 kWh charge, this would easily explain this.
But this would be a serious design flaw...Does anyone have/know the temperature/capacity curve for the Leaf?

 

[mikexilva]

Maybe it's about time to ask for the source code of the algorithm calculating remaining range, and access to logs from every battery module... BTW the car has an onboard computer, can we install a widget showing real battery charge state and miles left based on different algorithms?
What about the phone app does it show any more accuracy, or it just repeats what car computer calculates?

Nissan should open source the whole IT system used in the LEAF though...

 

[mwalsh]

Anyway, assuming that 3 bars SOC mean 25% charge left = 6 kWH that should have gotten me 6 x 3.4 Miles or 20.4 miles, which would have been enough.

I would have expected 3 bars to get me 18-21 miles @ 65-75mph. But that is with SoCal daytime winter temps in the low to mid-70s. I think the wild-card here has to be the relatively cold temperatures.

 

[klapauzius]

I was strictly going the speed limit, i.e. 55 mph (cruise control on!). Its about 16 miles freeway driving, the rest is at lower speeds.

 

[evnow]

The car started out at 80% charge in the garage, which is about 45-48 F at this time of the year, maybe a bit lower on cold days like this one. I wonder if at this temperature the capacity of the car is actually less than 24 kWh? If the bars just show relative charge level and all range calculations are based on 24 kWh charge, this would easily explain this.
But this would be a serious design flaw...Does anyone have/know the temperature/capacity curve for the Leaf?

The bars represent % of the usable charge (so because of the cold if it was 22 kwh, bars would be relative to that). I'd be surprised if there is actually a bug that calculates based on 24 kwh, instead of actual remaining charge. But, not out of question. It could be a simple coding bug rather than a design flaw.

 

[abasile]

At this point the car was showing 26 miles left, SOC was 3 bars.

Given that SOC, it doesn't seem surprising that you ran out of charge. What is alarming is that turtle mode didn't get you further, thus leaving your family in an unsafe situation. It would have been best if the car had gone into turtle mode sooner and thereby given you more of an opportunity to get out of the flow of traffic.

Perhaps there are inherent difficulties in measuring SOC at lower temperatures. I have had cell phones (with Li-ion batteries) that unexpectedly quit working in the cold, in spite of previously showing charge remaining.

This may illustrate the value of the upcoming Cold Weather Package, assuming it does indeed come with a battery heater.

Also, if one runs out of charge in a developed area close to home, perhaps the fastest resolution would be to beg for or "borrow" a 110 V outlet. An "emergency kit" consisting of a really long, beefy extension cord seems like a good idea.

 

[smkettner]

Thanks for the additional info... so did Nissan tow you home or to the dealer?
I assume they took you home.

 

[LEAFer]

Sorry to hear about your experience ...

As to range estimates ... don't forget the additional passengers (weight) ... plus luggage ?

 

[wsbca]

At this point the car was showing 26 miles left, SOC was 3 bars.

Given that SOC, it doesn't seem surprising that you ran out of charge.

Agreed, especially since it's not clear whether at that point it had just dropped to 3 or was on the way down to 2. Even with 3 "full" bars 20 miles in the cold seems like a stretch.

I think one thing to take from this (aside from hopefully some followup from Nissan regarding the ridiculously ineffective emergency response) is that recharging the car opportunistically is a good idea and probably habit to get into (assuming there isn't a huge rate disincentive to do so, which I grant there may be) - if your wife would have plugged in for an hour after the morning errands, it would have all been no problem - not sure if that would have cost you significantly more than your nighttime charge. Obviously the car reading 60 on departure _should_ mean a 40 mile round trip is no problem, but for example due to the terrain close to our house (ending the previous day's drive) we start the day at a range of about 67 (with 10 bars) and because of that same terrain, it can still read 67 when my wife gets to work 12 miles later, but of course the real range has dropped (along with at least 2 bars). When there's more public infrastructure in place, that should make things easier as well - if you could have pulled into a McDonalds for a coffee when you got down to 2 bars, 30 minutes of L2 would have solved it - in a perfect world (exemplified by LAX, apparently) the time she spent at the cell phone lot would have instead been spent hooked up to a free charger at the airport, with free parking.

 

[rmay635703]

On my ev (not a leaf mind you) When I am going to be traveling a bit of an unexpected path a questionable distance I tend to drive MUCH slower and hypermile to ensure I get to where I need to go.

The leaf would likely give you double the range at 40mph than it would at 65mph, then coast down to stops as much as possible.

This might seem a bit over the top but why argue with what actually works? Better to go it super slow and make it than to risk a stop in traffic.

Also on the cold weather thing I am wondering if the batteries REAL capacity drops or if they just appear to loose capacity because their voltage is lower than expected, it might serve Nissan well to get a decent thermometer and base range expectations on temperatures as others have suggested.

Also on my car my range is not as affected in cold weather if I drive slow but at high speeds my cold weather range is affected much much more dramatically. (but I have a different battery chemestry)

Also on an off topic for those in cold weather, it really isn't THAT hard to heat your batteries at home, an electric blanket does the trick

Good Luck
Ryan

 

[wsbca]

I was strictly going the speed limit, i.e. 55 mph (cruise control on!). Its about 16 miles freeway driving, the rest is at lower speeds.

Unless the road is dead flat with no traffic, I really do think that better performance (efficiency) is possible without cruise control, not necessarily by "hypermiling" but certainly by being more anticipatory that the cruise can possibly be, thereby using momentum, bleeding speed, maybe some subtle drafting, and prolonging regen here and there.

One other (small) factor occurred to me - on the way home in addition to your wife and the kids you added yourself and your luggage to the load...any climbing on the way home would be just that much harder with the addition of another person.

Neither of these nuances should be enough to make the difference between making it home and running out, I'm just saying everything adds up - as I said above, what you really needed (with 20-20 hindsight) was one hour of L2 at some point during the day.

 

[klapauzius]

The tow truck driver towed me home. But not because Nissan roadside assistance did change their mind, but because of my AAA membership...
Thank goodness it was 11:30 pm by then and my neighbors where all in bed already...what a humiliating sight

Anyway, I had no heavy luggage and we were two "normal" sized adults and two kids (22 months and 6 years). The total "people" load was <400 pounds, considerable lower than the "average" American couple

to add to the conundrum:
The GPS shows a distance in the upper right corner, right in your field of view when you are driving, which is apparently the distance as the crow flies and NOT the actual distance on the ground. It is kind of silly, but I assumed this was the actual distance to go...to my credit I had an 6h plane trip with a toddler behind me.

This is dangerously misleading...

I hope all these problems can be addressed with a simple firmware update...

 

[evnow]

We have all read other reports that say you have quite a bit of juice left after getting battery low (mainly from SoCal). I'd read that it is more difficult to figure out the SOC in cold weather ... is that the problem ?

BTW, did you report to Nissan ?

 

[smkettner]

The tow truck driver towed me home. But not because Nissan roadside assistance did change their mind, but because of my AAA membership...

This would be a good reason to require dealers to have 24/7 access to at least one charge station. Would still be a pita and the wife and kids would get a cab.
Although Nissan needs to sharpen their pencil on this only tow to the dealer requirement.
Should be tow to closest charging station IMO.

 

[klapauzius]

Actually in my service contract it says explicitly that

a) the towing to dealership requirement does NOT apply to the Leaf
b) equally, the $100 limit does not apply to the LEAF

The stupid roadside assistance people did not know this...

 

[smkettner]

I will bookmark that page to be able to easily read it to them. Or I will pay cash and fight it the next day.

 

[klapauzius]

I think one thing to take from this (aside from hopefully some followup from Nissan regarding the ridiculously ineffective emergency response) is that recharging the car opportunistically is a good idea and probably habit to get into (assuming there isn't a huge rate disincentive to do so, which I grant there may be) - if your wife would have plugged in for an hour after the morning errands, it would have all been no problem

Believe it or not, but the University of Washington does not provide EV charging for its employees yet, so that was not an option...

- not sure if that would have cost you significantly more than your nighttime charge. Obviously the car reading 60 on departure _should_ mean a 40 mile round trip is no problem, but for example due to the terrain close to our house (ending the previous day's drive) we start the day at a range of about 67 (with 10 bars) and because of that same terrain, it can still read 67 when my wife gets to work 12 miles later, but of course the real range has dropped (along with at least 2 bars). When there's more public infrastructure in place, that should make things easier as well - if you could have pulled into a McDonalds for a coffee when you got down to 2 bars, 30 minutes of L2 would have solved it - in a perfect world (exemplified by LAX, apparently) the time she spent at the cell phone lot would have instead been spent hooked up to a free charger at the airport, with free parking.

SeaTac has electric car charging in its parking structures, but they are 110 V, so plugging in for 30 minutes would have not helped much...well maybe with an extra 0.5 kWh we could have made the last 2 miles...
Seattle is woefully unprepared for EVs yet, but hopefully things will pick up here eventually.

Anyway, in a sense this was a useful experience.
The take home message is obviously that in cold weather there is zero tolerance as far as the battery charge level is concerned...I guess it is hard to let go of the gas-era habits, where there is always something left in the tank to get you home.
Actually I would prefer to have less mileage initially, e.g. start with 73 instead of 83 miles range, and some "hidden" reserve on empty instead, but maybe that is just a matter of reconditioning my brain.

 

[DaveEV]

Actually I would prefer to have less mileage initially, e.g. start with 73 instead of 83 miles range, and some "hidden" reserve on empty instead, but maybe that is just a matter of reconditioning my brain.

Sounds like it. At least both cases of "draining it" have occurred at relatively sedate highway speeds - you at 55 mph and the OP at 65 mph. Interestingly - both have occurred within 2 miles of the final destination.

It sure seems like an accurate SOC meter would really help as you get to the bottom of the pack - as well as knowing how many miles / kWh the computer is using to estimate DTE. At the very least one might be able to quickly say - *!!**% the computer is off on it's consumption - I better slow down 5-10 mph which should increase range about 10-20% w/o HVAC.